Night Flight: Chame to Panama city

Today I performed two flights on the Cessna 172 in the livery of MAG Flight Training. This 2nd flight was an IFR practice under night conditions.

My flight plan is shown on the left map. The departure airport was Chame airfield in the town of Chame, province of Panama. Departure time was 18:38 (UTC-5) with just enough light to see the runway. Our runway is at 141 ft of altitude but there are a few mountains in the vicinity.

From Chame I would fly heading 028 degrees towards DABEL intersection (direct) climbing to 3,500 feet. There are some mountains in the area of Lidice near DABEL so we have to make sure to have reached cruise altitude. Do note however, this is flight simulation so the terrain mesh may not be accurate!.

In the darkness I climbed to cruise altitude with the lights of the towns and the Panamerican highway below. Prior to departure I had set the Heading bug to my initial course 028 after performing a turn because I took off from Chame runway 18. Our first leg to DABEL would be around 11 nm.

I had also tuned the NAV1 and NAV2 radios to the Taboga VOR and COM1 to Panama Approach. The OBS1 I set to R-083 in preparation to that turn and OBS2 to 007 degrees. Having flown a straight line heading 028 I would have reached the DABEL intersection when the DME showed 15nm west of Taboga and also because my CDI on VOR1 would indicate I was about to intercept the TBG R-083. At that point I turned right and went straight to Taboga VOR heading into the sea and total darkness. Our next queue would be the VOR1 To/From indicator as well as the DME as this leg would be 15nm.

A few nautical miles from Taboga I initiated a descent o 2,500 feet always keeping an eye on the artificial horizon as to not to disorient myself. Obviously looking outside as well .

Just before reaching Taboga I turned left to fly the Taboga outbound radial 007 towards Marcos A. Gelabert. The initial approach fix being about 5nm from the airport This picture here shows the little dot of the airport approach lights and on our left the Bridge of the Americas. Well, not much can be seen, it was dark.

On our approach further descent was required in order to safely arrive to the airport. The Panama Pacifico (Howard airport) was on the left but on this snapshot you could see the Bridge of The Americas as our virtual Cessna made the approach in between Ancon Hill on the right an the other hill on the left.

In this final approach I maintained about 70 knots approach speed with flaps. Landing was done softly on Marcos A. Gelabert runway 36 with scenery from Victor Brumley who has done an excellent job (work in progress). Then I taxied to the ramp and ended the flight.

This small picture shows the flight analysis done by FSX, the blue line in the middle represents the Taboga (TBG) VOR. It was fun though not much scenery could be appreciated, nothing like practicing some IFR skills even though I am not a (real life) pilot . As always fly safe in the virtual skies and above all do not use this information for real flight planning!.